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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Italian (Sicily) : in part a metonymic occupational name for a grower and seller of gourds (squashes or marrows), from Italian zucca ‘gourd’ (Late Latin cucutia, for classical Latin cucurbita). More often, however, it is a nickname from the same word used in its colloquial transferred sense ‘head’, in particular ‘empty head’.
  • Italian (Sicily) : possibly also a topographic name of Albanian origin, from zhukë, zhuka ‘marsh’, ‘rush’.

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